Here we are in the middle of January, and we just received our first winter utilities bill. A couple of years ago, we replaced the furnace in the house, and added a central air component as well. The unit is made by a company called Goodman and it was touted to be at least 90% efficient in cutting costs from what our old heating system was (we didn’t have central air in the old system). We discovered almost immediately that the unit was going to pretty much pay for itself within a few years.
Of course, in the meantime we’ve been building up a tidy credit with the utility company, which I think they’ve been getting antsy about. We’re on a budgeted billing system, and for many years it’s been mostly efficient in keeping our bills within a reasonable range. Though with the less efficient furnace, there were times that our bills exceeded $400-500/month, and though our budget amount was somewhere between $200-300, it never ate much into the credit at the end of the fiscal year the following June. In 2024 however, someone in the finance office must have gotten the idea that if they lower our budget amount to under $150/month, the larger bills in the winter will eat up the credit that we have had since about 2020. And it seems to be working. This past month, the bill was over $300, and it made a significant dent in the aforementioned credit. Not to worry though, even as I’ve been pushing the thermostat to between 68° and 70°, because this winter has been far colder than last year. Not as much snow (thankfully as my old snowblower is down for the count currently due to a fuel line issue) but certainly the temperatures have been causing the house to feel a lot colder than in years past.
The way I figure it right now, if we continue to have colder temperatures (like Tuesday night when the temperature dropped to -7°) February’s bill will be about the same as January’s and by April our credit may be completely used up. Or pretty close. The nice thing is; at that point we will start to use the furnace less, and thus our utility bills will drop down accordingly. We do use LNG for our water heater as well as our stove, so there will be some charge, but not like when we’re using the furnace daily when it’s bone-chillingly cold. Come summer, the central air runs on electricity, which we as a rule pay less for since we’re a member of a local utility and not having to be double-dipped from an organization like NYSEG, that has a veritable monopoly on large swaths of New York.
Even so, it should be interesting to see what the bean counters think an equitable budget charge will be for the heating/cooling season of ’25-’26. Hopefully it won’t go off the deep end because the bills for the past month or two were higher. But we’ll roll with them regardless.